The dentist in charge

The Statesman has a profile of Don McLeroy, the young-earth creationist who is also the chair of the State Board of Education and who is currently leading the fight to cripple science education in Texas. I’m not going to get into the details of this story – Hal and TFN Insider do all the heavy lifting, if you’re interested – but I will pass along Greg’s observation that McLeroy didn’t score a particularly impressive electoral victory in 2006, and will be on the ballot again in 2010. That’s the good news; the bad news is that McLeroy’s district is made up of 28 mostly small, mostly rural counties – suburban Collin County was about 30% of the vote there in 06 – and therefore isn’t likely to be all that friendly to a Dem in 2010, no matter how much more attention McLeroy’s harmful antics attract. Still, this is a fight that will need to be fought, so I hope he will draw an opponent at least as strong as his fellow traveller Cynthia Dunbar has done.